


You can make this figure with your hips

by haemodye



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Amnesia, Angst, Angst and Porn, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Bittersweet, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Codependency, Complicated Relationships, Desperation, Emotional Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Fix-It of Sorts, Grief/Mourning, Headaches & Migraines, M/M, Major Character Death refers to those who died during The Snap, Maria Stark's Good Parenting, Nobody dies in this but Tony's got amnesia and experiences some Grief for a bit there, Not A Fix-It, Or maybe it is?, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Remix, Temporary Amnesia, True Love's Kiss, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Emotional Tension, maybe???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 19:35:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17710298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haemodye/pseuds/haemodye
Summary: Tony wakes up with a screaming headache, years into the future, where almost everyone he loves is dead.Stop him if you've heard this one before.





	You can make this figure with your hips

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Let The Memory Live Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17707595) by [Shadowolf19](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowolf19/pseuds/Shadowolf19). 



> Usual warnings: references to canonical major character death from Infinity War, clear mental instability in characters dealing with overwhelming grief. Stay safe and enjoy!
> 
> Small Plug: I am participating in the Fandom Trumps Hate Auction this year! If any of y'all want a fic and to donate to a good cause, the minimum bid for a work from me is $5. The more $ given, the bigger a fic I'm willing to write, and also maybe toss in some fanart! If that interests you, check out the listing [here](https://fth2019offerings.dreamwidth.org/tag/username:+haemodye).

 

> Intermission. Mare Internum.
> 
> We will have a brief pause now. If this novel were a theater, you could go out into the lobby, wait in line for a drink, or for the bathroom. Give people a chance to admire your clothes, hair, or jewels. Step outside for some air or a smoke. Backstage the crew would be busy transforming the scenery, actors would change their costumes and redo their makeup. Some would be done until final curtain, others awaiting their first entrance.  
>    
>  But we're not in the theater, and I am not letting you go outside this story, not really. Where we are is more like a pause between breaths. Whether you're inhaling or exhaling, there's a pause just before, like the pause you can feel more than hear before the tide reverses. Where we are is the point of intersection in the figure eight. Turned on its side the eight becomes the symbol of infinity.   
>    
>  You can make this figure with your hips when you dance. Over and over you will return to that moment of balance before your weight shifts from one hip to the other. The balance of this story is about to shift. The scenery is changing, as we make our slow way across Mare Internum. 
> 
> — Elizabeth Cunningham, _The Passion of Mary Magdalen_

 

When Tony was younger, he’d had horrible migraines.

He’d gotten them from his mother. Long swathes of his childhood were filled with memories of his mother lying prone in a dark room, draped only in silk so as not to agitate her oversensitive nerves, black velvet curtains drawn over the floor-to-ceiling windows of her bedroom. Sound, light, motion, and even physical stimuli would disquiet her. She was prone to vomiting unless given strong medication, which she hated to take because of the way they’d made her feel.

What he remembers most now is how furious she always seemed at the start of one. It was as if her body was a creature separate from her mind, and it had betrayed her once again.

“This stupid curse,” she once told Tony, scowling as she disappeared behind her Coromandel _huaping_ and began pulling off her clothes, changing them out for an embroidered silk robe. “I didn’t use to get these before I had you, you know.”

“Is it my fault?” four-year-old Tony had asked, very sensibly he thought. Howard seemed to think most things were his fault, after all.

But his mother had just offered him a wry smile. “If Minerva is punishing me for daring to have such a clever child, then I shall bear the punishment with grace,” she’d said, leaning down to kiss his brow. ~~~~

When he’d hit puberty and started having them himself, his mother had tutted and fussed and frowned over him, blaming herself.

“Mine are triggered by stress,” she’d told him, long fingers rubbing gently at the base of his skull. “But you’re a Stark, and you cannot avoid stress, so instead we will mitigate. It will help that you’ve been doing Wing Chun for several years now. Meditation and strong physical discipline should help you learn to control your cortisol output. The former sometimes helps me.”

Eventually, Tony had learned his triggers. Naps were one, surprisingly; Tony could go for days without sleeping and then crash, but interrupting a REM cycle was a surefire way to trigger a migraine. Acute pain was another, as well as excessive sleep. But every once in a while, they snuck up on him, sure and inevitable as an eclipse blotting out the sun. They had never been as bad as his mother’s: just pain, hyperacusis, photophobia, and occasionally nausea. But just like his mother, his sometimes lasted for days, and he was ever eager to avoid them when possible.

All of this to say, when he wakes up with his head pounding, feeling like he’s ready to throw up everything in his stomach and half his organs besides, it’s an unfortunately familiar feeling. What’s less familiar is the warm hand brushing through his hair, an unwelcome physical stimuli considering how much pain he’s in.

“Knock it off,” he slurs, lifting a weak arm up to knock the hand away even as he winces at the bright lights. “FRIDAY, lights at 10%.”

“FRI- oh my God, _no_ ,” Steve Rogers says from uncomfortably close to him, and Tony blinks burning eyes open in alarm, rolling away from him instinctively only to end up in blinding pain as he falls to the floor in a heap. For two delirious beats he can’t process anything but agony and glaring white light, but then the lights dim, and he can blink his eyes open to polished black stone shot through with geometric white lines, a low blue glow shimmering from a far wall of painted glass. Bruce is kneeling in front of him, and Tony blinks at him once, twice, before throwing his arms around Bruce’s neck.

“Uh,” Bruce says, and Tony pulls back, holding him by the shoulders.

“Where were you?” Tony demands, wide-eyed and wild. “God, we’ve been looking for you for _years_ , what-”

“Bruce, what’s wrong with him?”

“What’s wrong with me?” Tony repeats, turning to look at where Rogers is leaning over the metal table he’d been lying on with fear writ large across his face. He’s grown a beard, which is just. No. “What’s wrong with _you_ , Chewbacca? They run out of scarves at L. L. Bean?”

“I- what?” Rogers touches his face, then frowns down at Tony, then Bruce. “Is he brain damaged? I thought you said the scans were fine!”

“I said we won’t know more until he wakes up,” Bruce corrects and Tony turns back to him with a quiet kind of wonder building in his chest. He touches Bruce’s temple with two fingers, where the hair has started to turn grey.

“God, how long’s it been?” Tony murmurs, but Bruce’s expression is weary, searching.

“Longer than you know, I think,” he says. “Tony, how long’s it been since Ultron, for you?”

Tony blinks at him, then at Rogers. He takes in the new lab, Bruce’s greying temples, Rogers’ close physical proximity to him.

“He’s having a migraine,” a familiar voice says quietly, and Tony glances back behind Bruce to see Rhodey, thank fucking God. “I got the lights, but sound is gonna hurt right now. And someone might wanna get a bucket.”

“Nausea?” Bruce asks, eyeing Tony critically.

“Yeah. He gets overwhelmed by too much stimuli, so touching is a no. He might want to get out of his clothes, if it’s really bad.” Rhodey comes around Bruce’s other side, and now that Tony’s looking, he can see that Rhodey’s leg braces are much more advanced and organic than he’d expected. “You okay, man?”

“I don’t think so,” Tony says faintly. “How much time am I missing, Bruce?”

“You tell me,” Bruce sighs, his hands twisting together in that familiar, nervous way. It makes Tony’s chest ache to see it. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Tony opens his mouth, glances at Cap, then looks back at Bruce again.

“Uh,” he says.

A soft, pained noise looses from Rogers’ mouth, but Tony isn’t looking at him. He’s watching Bruce’s face as it sets into a stiff, determined kind of expression.

“Steve, leave,” he says, and Tony lets out a rough breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

“I-” Rogers says, then stops himself. “Right. I’ll just…I’ll be outside.”

He stands and turns, heading out of the lab.

“Jesus,” Rhodey says, eyebrows raising. “This is…not what we need right now.”

“Sorry my apparent amnesia is poorly timed,” Tony deadpans, and Rhodey winces. “Guess Cap and I are cool now? Water under the bridge?”

“Oh boy,” Rhodey says, turning away. Tony can see Cap stiffen, his steps hitching for half a second before he shakes his head, keeps walking. “I’m not touching that one.”

“Tony,” Bruce says, and Tony turns back to him. “Does the name Thanos mean anything to you?”

“No?” Tony says, and Bruce closes his eyes, taking a slow breath. “Brucie-bear, come on. Talk to me. What’s going on? Is this temporary? Fixable? How much time am I missing?”

“The last thing you remember is Cap and you…?” Rhodey asks, looking wry, but Tony shakes his head.

“A few weeks past. Rogers sent me this…this letter,” Tony says, frowning. Rhodey makes a face at the use of Rogers’ name, but Tony chooses to ignore it. “And a phone.”

“So, you opened Cap’s package,” Rhodey prompts. “And then?”

Tony shakes his head, and Rhodey lets out a low curse.

“Okay,” Bruce says, pushing himself to standing. “Okay, we can work on this. We’ll get you an MRI, and we’ll get Shuri down here. Maybe she’ll see something I don’t.”

“Shuri?” Tony prompts, and Bruce grins down at him. It’s the first smile he’s seen since he woke up in this strange new world.

“You like her,” Bruce says, and the way he says it means that there’s a lot Tony’s missing. “You like her _a lot_.”

—

In some ways, it’s easier to talk to Shuri than anyone else, Tony finds over the next 24 hours. There’s no real history between them for her to be upset or startled about Tony not remembering. They’ve only been casual friends for the year since The Decimation—they’d already bonded over the mathematical inaccuracy of that term, and how much they hate it—and so in some ways, Tony is still new to her.

“So, nobody’s told you,” she says, apropos of nothing the next morning. Bruce is still sleeping, never an early riser, but Tony hadn’t slept at all. Instead he’d been pouring over the data, wrangling with his own grief about Pepper, even though they’d been broken up last he remembered. The fact that they’d been back together—that they’d been _engaged_ —before Thanos killed half of all life in the universe was. Well, it was a lot to process.

“Told me what?” Tony asks, and Shuri spares him with a Look.

“About you and the Captain.”

“What about Rogers?” Tony asks warily, fiddling with his own brain scans. There’s nothing _wrong_ , is the problem, which means it’s probably something like magic. They’re still waiting to hear back from Wong.

What had happened was this: Tony and Rogers had apparently been volunteering at a youth centre, teaching self-defence classes. When he’d asked why they had free time to volunteer post-apocalypse, Rhodey had just given him a look and said that it had been a year, and if they didn’t find things to keep them sane, there was no way they’d be able to fix what had been broken before. He’d said it with the strangest look on his face, as though there was some irony to what he was saying. Tony, of course, had no idea what he was talking about, because he _didn’t remember_. He’d lost years, because some masked, enhanced assailants had appeared and attacked him and Cap while they were trying to run off a drug dealer outside the centre.

“Turns out the serum gives Cap resistance to some mind-altering effects,” Bruce had told him. “Wanda’s powers aren’t actually really telekinetic or telepathic in nature. She can- or. Uh. She _could_ , well. It’s more like she could alter reality. That’s how she was able to heal people by just recreating flesh out of nothing.”

“Right. So he recovered easy, and I’m stuck like this after a two-day coma,” Tony said, and Bruce had sighed.

“We don’t know that you’re stuck, Tony. We’ll keep working on it.”

“They keep bringing me these broken white boys,” Shuri sighs, and Tony offers her a wry smile. “At least I know you.”

“I’m sorry I don’t remember you,” Tony says, but Shuri just shakes her head. “What about Rogers?”

Shuri stares at him for a moment, before laughing quietly and going back to her display. “You’re lovers,” she says, casually, as if that isn’t the _craziest thing_ _Tony’s heard yet_. Worse than the idea that half of the population of every living thing in the universe was gone, including Pepper, and Happy, and Peter, who apparently he’d become even closer to before the kid died in his arms.

“That’s not funny,” he says, because it isn’t. But now that she’s said it, he can’t stop thinking about it: Rogers’ hand brushing his hair back, his pained expression, the careful way he’d moved through the room while Tony was getting his bearings.

“People do strange things, in their grief,” she says. She speaks as though she knows well, from experience. He supposes that in the past year, most of the world would know well enough. “He lost both of his best friends, old and new. You lost your fiancé and your protégé. It makes sense.”

“You do know about the whole…cage match, lying to me about my parents’ murder, leaving me for dead in Siberia, sending me a bullshit non-apology letter thing, right?” Tony prods, and Shuri nods.

“He is a man,” she says, as though this explains everything. “He made mistakes. You’ve made many mistakes in your life, Tony Stark.”

“I’ve paid for them.”

“Do you not think he paid for them, in his years in exile?” Shuri asks. Tony opens his mouth, then closes it again. “Often strong emotions are re-contextualised by circumstance. The wound is fresh for you. I understand. But you should know, so that when you see him, you better understand his actions.”

“You want me to be nicer to him,” Tony sneers, but Shuri only rolls her eyes.

“You and he have gotten better at communication, but not so much better that this situation could pass without violence,” she tells him. “I would like to avoid the stupidity of emotionally constipated white men, and instead focus on you regaining your memories so we can go back to trying to locate Thanos and the stones and reverse what he did to our world. So now I have told you, and you can choose what to do with the information.” She tilts her head to the side, a small smile playing around the corners of her mouth. “But you are not a cruel man, so perhaps I have expectations of how you might handle me telling you something like this.”

“Oh, you’re good,” Tony says, and Shuri laughs. “Damn. Now I’m really, really sad I don’t remember you. I bet we’ve done some _awesome_ science together.”

“We have,” Shuri admits, and Tony grins. “But for now, come and let me scan you again. We’re going to go over the igniting incident and see if anything interesting happens.”

“Ugh,” Tony says. More brain scans. But he goes, because the world keeps turning, and they need him for the good fight. “Alright. Let’s do this thing.”

—

Tony doesn’t really know what he’s doing here.

He’s standing outside of Rogers’ door at midnight because Shuri had kicked him out, telling him that if this was a temporary result of a traumatic brain injury, then he needed to sleep and recover. And he’d tried, really. He’d really tried, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said, the way Rogers had looked when Bruce had told him to leave.

He raises his hand to knock, then drops it again.

What is this going to accomplish, anyway? Does he want Rogers’ apology in person? Does he want to talk it out?

 _You want to know how it happened_ , something says inside of him, and well. That’s true, probably. He’s always been curious, always been dedicated to poking things, to twisting them up and taking them apart to see how they work. _You can’t know unless you ask him. Maybe there’s something you’re missing; he was with you when you were hit, after all._

Tony raises his hand and knocks. And then, when there’s no response, he knocks again: once, twice, until Rogers pulls the door open, a bemused scowl on his face. He’s shaved his beard, Tony notices, which is…interesting. His expression when he sees Tony is like daybreak cresting a mountain, and then he’s pulling Tony in, tangling his fingers into Tony’s hair and kissing him like his life depends on it. He runs his tongue over Tony’s lips, sucks Tony’s lower lip into his mouth gently, and-

Tony sucks in a sharp breath through his nose, staggering back and falling against the side of the doorway as his brain goes through a hard reboot. He can’t see, the blood roaring in his ears as the years return to him in a flood, and then the world tilts sideways and he loses all sense of direction.

“Tony?” Steve is saying, over and over again, and _oh_. He’s picked Tony up, and is placing him in his bed as gently as Tony’s ever been handled in his life. “Tony? What’s wrong, talk to me, is it-”

And then he stops, and the lights dim. Blessed darkness covers the room, and Tony wipes a hand over his face, gasping in relief.

“Fuck,” Tony breathes, reaching a blind hand out to grasp Steve’s questing one. “Hoooly fuck, definitely magic. 100%, no doubt, absolutely a fucking shitty magic spell placed on me, god _damnit_.”

“You remember?” Steve asks, and Tony lets out a rough laugh.

“You should know,” he says, squeezing Steve’s hand, “I didn’t before you kissed me.”

He can feel Steve stiffen, hear the sharp intake of breath in the darkness. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, loosing a wild laugh. “Shit, that could have gone so poorly for you. For both of us, really, but-”

“Are you saying a kiss broke the curse?” Steve asks, cutting him off, and Tony opens his mouth, then closes it again.

“Um.”

“Because, uh.” Steve clears his throat. “I’m just saying, I’ve read a lot of stories, and-”

“Don’t,” Tony says, and Steve stops talking. “Don’t…just don’t.”

They are so, so far from being ready for that conversation. They might not be ready in a decade, Tony isn’t sure.

“Can I…kiss you again?” Steve asks, and Tony barks out an incredulous laugh.

“Go wild, Cap,” Tony says, and Steve crawls over him in the bed, straddling his waist and taking his face between his hands. He kisses Tony like it’s the first time, like it’s the last time, like kissing Tony is all he can think to do. It’s a kiss Tony recognises from nights when the nightmares send Steve into a flailing, gasping, dangerous mess, when Tony is his life raft in the cold ocean and the only oxygen he can breathe is the oxygen he steals from Tony’s lips.

“Tony,” he whispers, biting along his jaw, curling his tongue into Tony’s ear. “Tony.”

“I’m here,” Tony says, “I’ve got you.”

The sound Steve makes is broken and half-feral, his fingers grasping at Tony’s shirt, curling into his skin, against his stomach, undoing each button one by one and bathing them both in familiar pale blue light.

“Please,” he whispers, and Tony tilts his head back, opening for Steve’s onslaught. “God, I thought I’d lost you. I didn’t- I can’t do this without you, Tony. You’re- I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know what to do, I was going out of my mind and I left Tash in charge on base and I’m-”

“Shh,” Tony whispers, burying his fingers in Steve’s hair and drawing him up and into a kiss. He sucks Steve’s tongue into his mouth, running his nails down his scalp until Steve melts into him, moaning and weak to Tony’s ministrations. He pulls off with a gasp, and the kisses he presses to Tony’s neck are less frantic, more open-mouthed and hot with desire. “That’s it, baby. I’m right here.”

“Tony,” Steve says again, and then he’s pulling on Tony’s flies, unlacing Tony’s shoes and tossing them in the corner, followed by his boxers and slacks. “ _Tony_.”

“What do you need?” Tony asks him, and Steve takes a slow breath.

“God, you have a migraine, don’t you?” Steve asks. His fingers skitter over Tony’s hipbones, the bluish glow of the nano-housing in his chest lending a strange, pallid cast to his angular face.

“It’s barely started. And you know an orgasm cuts that right off for me half the time,” Tony says, easy. “Tell me what you need, Steven.”

“I need to feel you,” Steve says, a shuddering breath escaping him. He runs his fingertips over the nano-housing, then trails them down Tony’s stomach, ghosting over his cock. “I need…I don’t care who’s on top, but I need…”

“Tell me,” Tony says, and Steve lets out a rough breath.

“I need to fuck you,” he says, and Tony smiles. He spreads his legs.

“Come on, then, soldier boy.” He licks his lips, deliberately provocative. “Get on with it.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, fervent, weirdly serious, and then he’s reaching over to the bedside table for the lube. “I just…the way you looked at me, like I- God, I…”

“You didn’t see me until after Thanos did his thing,” Tony acknowledges. “We didn’t talk while I was…like that. You’d never seen me like that.”

“No,” Steve says, and Tony nods. “I’m not…I’m not sorry, for the fight. Not really.”

“You’re not sorry you didn’t let me kill your best friend in front of you?” Tony asks, wry. “Colour me shocked, Steve.”

Steve winces. “You-… I know I made mistakes. I was selfish.”

“Bigger fish to fry,” Tony reminds him, and Steve nods. His fingers trail down the inside of Tony’s thigh, gentle and warm. “Steve. It’s alright.”

“It’s not,” Steve says. He glances up at the nano-housing, then down to Tony’s still mostly-soft cock. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but that kiss…if this was a fairy tale kinda curse. Well.”

“Steve,” Tony says warningly, but Steve just tilts his head up to look at Tony. His eyes are sharp, assessing. That familiar, awful stubbornness overtakes him, an expression that Tony has learned to hate as much as he’s wary of it. It’s enough to make the low ache of pain in Tony’s skull flare with warning.

“It’s always that kinda kiss, for me,” he says, firm, and Tony takes a deep, heavy breath. “I think…I think you’ve known that, for a long time.”

“I can’t,” Tony says, because they’ve had this conversation before. They’re trying to undo everything that Thanos did, and that means the hope that Pepper and Peter and Happy and everyone can come back. “I…we were talking about _kids_ , Steve.”

Steve swallows. “I know that,” he says. “I know, I just. I just thought I should say it, that’s all. So you know.”

“Why?” Tony asks, frustration building up in him, and now it’s Steve’s turn to lean in. He presses a soft kiss to the corner of Tony’s mouth, smoothing his hands over Tony’s sides. Tony’s head is pounding, now, a slow, steady throb of pain that means he needs to either take some meds and sleep or get to the sex sooner rather than later.

“I want happiness for you,” Steve says, and Tony’s breath punches out of him sure as if he’d taken a hard hit to the sternum. “I want that for you, more than anything. You’d make an amazing father, Tony. And I want-” His voice breaks, and Tony watches as he closes his eyes, takes a slow breath in, out. “I want Buck back. I want…I need that. I do. But that doesn’t mean I can’t… We have to keep living. You’re the one who keeps telling us that. We have to keep living, and that means building new relationships. Letting the world around us be…be incredible, and beautiful. Letting people in.”

He stops, swallows, and Tony knows what he’s going to say before it happens.

“Letting ourselves have love, where we can find it,” Steve says, and Tony claps a hand over his mouth.

He closes his eyes. “Steve. Don’t.” He turns a sharp glare on Steve, who’s looking down at him with a strange kind of stubborn tenderness that doesn’t reassure Tony at all. He decides to go on the offensive. “This is just the intermission. You’ve already shown where your allegiances lie. You’ll be glad when this nightmare is over, and you can march off into the sunset with your platonic ideal of brotherly love and the niece of your wartime girl, like that isn’t incredibly weird. And I’ll go back to my fiancé, and get married, and have two kids and a big smelly dog and an annoying spider babysitter. You already chose Barnes over me. Remember?”

Steve wrenches his mouth away from Tony’s hand with violence, eyes glittering wetly. “That isn’t fair, Tony! You gave me no choice-”

“You had two years to tell me-” Tony begins, before a sharp spike of pain stops him in his tracks, panting. They’ve been down this road before, and it always ends the same. He suddenly feels very exposed, and he pushes himself to sitting. “Maybe I should go.”

“No,” Steve says, blinking the moisture out of his eyes, and now Tony just feels like an asshole, He grabs hold of Tony’s biceps with fingers that are a little too firm for comfort, desperate and pleading. “Stay. Please, stay. I can’t- I need-…”

Tony takes pity on him, leaning in and pressing a kiss to one of his eyelids. If his mouth comes away wet, neither of them say anything about it. He kisses the other one, then mouths over the tear track below it, following the line to Steve’s mouth. He nips gently at Steve’s upper lip, then dips down, taking his lower lip into his mouth and sucking gently on it in the way that always, inevitably makes Steve whine into the kiss.

When he pulls back, Steve looks dazed, eyes half-lidded and dark.

“Come on, then,” he says, and Steve nods, pressing Tony back into the sheets. “My head’s killing me.”

“Let me take the edge off,” Steve says, and then he’s trailing his mouth down, and down, and Tony tips his head back and submits himself to the warm ministrations of his mouth.

Steve’s nowhere near as experienced as Tony in the bedroom, but nearly a year of sleeping with Tony has done a lot for his technique. With Tony barely even approaching hard, Steve can easily fit him into his mouth and throat, and that’s an incredibly strange sensation, hardening inside that soft, slick, hot place. Steve just takes it as his cock lengthens in his mouth, setting a slow, steady pace that works in counterpoint to his hands moving deliberate and slow over Tony’s body. Tony knows he’s getting older: wrinkles and scars litter unexpected places, and his veins look bluer by the day. Steve never seems to mind, his hands never anything but worshipful, and Tony thinks maybe that’s what he meant when he said that his kisses have always been the kind that could end curses. Tony’s never felt anything but strangely cherished with Steve, even when they first started and it had just been a kind of comfort sex for Tony. It was easier to talk with their bodies. Words got in the way, but Cap and Iron-Man had always moved like they were born to it, their movements clicking together like two gears perfectly machined to turn in tandem. With Steve’s hands on his skin, his mouth tracing abstract shapes over the sinew and bone of Tony’s aging spine, it was easier to forgive and forget. With Steve’s body clenching around his cock, his hair wild, eyes wide and trusting and desperate, it was easier to feel safe around him. It was easier to trust him on the field.

When he comes, it’s almost an afterthought. Sometimes sex is like that for Tony, when his brain is going too fast, too far, too hard. His body keeps going while his mind is elsewhere. Still, it’s enough to force a hard reboot, the orgasm sparkling bright through the pain centres of his brain and cutting the migraine off at the knees. As always, the pain flares for a few heartbeats, an unbearable swelling before it fades, slow as the tide receding from the shore.

When he comes back to earth, Steve is lying on top of him, his head pillowed on his arms as he stares at Tony’s face. His face is right in front of the nano-housing, and lit from below he looks even more gaunt than usual. The past year has been hard on all of them, and Tony fits his thumb to the indent of Steve’s occipital above his right cheekbone, tracing the purpling flesh below his eye with a single, firm stroke.

“I’m still here,” he says, and Steve turns his head, covering Tony’s hand with his own and pressing a fervent kiss to the palm there. “I’m right here with you.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, voice hoarse. It’s more growl than word, but Tony lets it slide, just this once. “Can I…?”

“Fuck me?” Tony fills in, and Steve winces at the words. “Go for it.”

“I want to take care of you,” Steve says, and Tony rolls his eyes. “Tony-”

“I said yes, didn’t I?” Tony asks, fond exasperation outweighing his irritation. “Go on. If you’re lucky, and very, _very_ good, you can maybe even get me hard again.”

Steve frowns, clearly hurt, and Tony sighs and scrubs his hands over his face.

“Steve,” he says, tired, “don’t ask for what I can’t give you. Please.”

“Can you let me be gentle to my lover, who just mysteriously recovered his memories after a two day coma?” Steve asks pointedly, and Tony winces.

“I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he complains, and Steve pulls his wrists away from his face. His expression when he looks down at him is kind, albeit sad.

“I shouldn’t have pushed,” he admits. A small smile steals over his face. “I never learn, with you.”

Tony has nothing to say to that, so instead he reaches out and picks up the discarded bottle of lubricant, taking Steve’s hand in his and pouring a generous amount over his fingers. Steve watches with half-lidded eyes, and Tony eyes his cock with a speculative expression.

“You could swing up here, let me suck you while you prep me,” he offers, but Steve shakes his head.

“I want to take care of you,” he says stubbornly, and Tony shrugs, letting himself fall back to the pillows. He spreads his legs in obvious invitation. “Thank you.”

“You’re too much,” Tony says, embarrassed now. He covers his eyes with one hand. “Go on, then.”

“Can I see you?” Steve asks, and Tony moves his hand, letting it fall to the pillow. “Thank you.”

“Stop thanking me,” Tony grumbles. “Jesus, Steve.”

Steve smiles that bashful, boyish smile of his that always makes Tony’s stomach turn over like he’s a kid in middle school with an awful crush. He opens his mouth under Steve’s when he leans in for a kiss, his lingering smile making it a little sloppier than usual as he reaches down, the cold, liquid touch of his fingers on Tony’s entrance enough to make him shiver. His tongue presses inside Tony’s mouth in tandem with his first finger, and Tony arches up under him, a soft sound escaping his chest at the dual sensation.

Steve is just as gentle as promised, working so slow that Tony is most certainly hard again by the time he pulls his fingers out. He’s sure his collarbones are littered with a few marks, and he’s too old for that, surely. Steve likes marking him, though; he likes to see evidence that he’s been there, that this isn’t a dream, that Tony is still here with him. Tony made him promise to always do it in places that were easy to cover, but he kind of thinks it’s hot. He’ll never admit that to Steve, even if he’s pretty sure he knows.

Steve rolls Tony over onto his side, spooning up behind him and tucking his nose behind Tony’s ear. One arm curls up under Tony’s head, fingers twining into his hair as Steve eases his way inside. It’s a sweet slide, with Tony as relaxed as he is, and he melts back onto Steve’s shoulder with a soft little sound of contentment.

Steve leans in to kiss him, and for a long few minutes they just stay like that, Steve kissing him and Tony letting himself be kissed, reaching back to tangle his fingers in Steve’s long, thick hair. He’s let it grow out so much, mostly keeping it back with product, but Tony kind of likes the way his bangs hang down when he leans in to kiss him in the mornings or after a shower. Right now, his hair hangs free, and Tony cards his fingers through it and rocks his hips back a little, slow and easy.

Steve moans softly into the kiss, his free hand sliding down over Tony’s stomach to take hold of his cock. He breaks the kiss with a soft bite, mouthing along Tony’s jaw until he’s settled back behind him, mouth slipping sweetly over the shell of his ear.

“This okay?” Steve asks, and Tony nods. “You feel amazing.”

“Come on,” Tony says, shifting in Steve’s hands, and Steve laughs. It’s just a small one, a low chuckle, but it’s enough to send a slow roll of pleasure up Tony’s spine. “Steve, baby, you’ve got me right here- _Oh_.”

Steve sets a slow and steady pace, not soft, just deliberate. He’s pressing into Tony’s sweet spot every time, and nestled in together like this he can get pretty deep. Tony’s content to melt back into his arms and let him run the show. Steve’s callouses are just shy of too much on his cock, and Tony moans quietly under his ministrations, then louder, his noises increasing in volume with his pleasure. No one would ever call Tony quiet, in or out of bed.

“That’s it,” Steve burrs in his ear, and oh, that’s never fair. Steve mid-sex is all Brooklyn brogue and rumbling purr, like the best kind of vintage engine. In the right kind of mood it’s enough to get Tony going, and he’s definitely responsive to it now. “You’re so perfect for me, sweetheart. Let me hear you.”

“Oh, God,” Tony gasps, arching under him, and Steve pants out a breathless laugh into the sensitive, mouth-wet shell of his ear. “ _Steve_.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and Tony can feel himself tightening. “God, Tony. You-”

Steve comes first, his hips stuttering against Tony’s. He ducks his head to Tony’s shoulder, teeth clamping down on the muscle there in a way that’s sure to leave a lovely ring bruise in the morning. That, his twitching cock inside Tony’s body, and his hand tightening on Tony’s is enough to send him over the edge not long after, his body jack-knifing in pleasure with Steve still hard inside of him.  It’s the kind of orgasm that whites out his vision in a good way, sound dimming around him as the blood roars in his ears, his body shimmering all the way down to his toes.

He collapses back into Steve’s arms with a gasping breath, his lungs filling with blessed oxygen as he tries to get his bearings. “Fuck,” he gasps, and Steve lets out a low purr of agreement behind him, his arm slipping around Tony’s waist to pull him back until they’re slotted together from head to toe. Steve’s still half-hard inside of him, but Tony doesn’t mind that one bit.

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve says, more packed into those two syllables than Tony had let him say in the whole nail-biting conversation that preceded the sex. It’s enough to make him concede his defeat, and he turns his head enough for Steve’s mouth to brush the outer shell of his ear. Steve obligingly nuzzles closer, lipping at the thin skin covering the cartilage, and Tony relaxes into his attentions with a soft sigh.

“If we bring them back,” he says, and Steve hums to show he’s listening, “it won’t…it won’t be the same. I know that.”

“You’re here, now,” Steve murmurs, soft as silk in his ear, and Tony huffs. “I’m not asking for anything else, Tony. Just. _Be_ here. With me. Right now.”

“I’m a futurist,” Tony quips, a token protest. Steve’s fingers tighten on his hip, a delicious burn before he remembers himself and lets go. “I’m here, Steve. You’ve got me right where you want me.”

“Alright,” Steve says. It sounds less like acceptance than a ceasefire, but that’s how it is between them. It’s what Tony expects, more than anything else. “Wanna get cleaned up, or sleep?”

“Too lazy,” Tony mumbles, the second half of his sentence slurred by a yawn, and Steve laughs softly in his ear.

“I can do it,” he offers, but Tony just shakes his head.

“Sleep,” he says, reaching back to grasp Steve’s hip. “Stay.”

“Okay, Tony,” Steve says, and Tony smiles. He lets his eyes close, warm and sated in Steve’s arms. And if Steve murmurs things he tells himself he isn’t ready to hear a few minutes later, when he’s meant to be asleep, well. That’s just one more thing that they can not talk about in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a speed remix event work, and so the reasons for Tony’s amnesia are *vague magic handwaving* because I didn’t want to get Super Into the Backstory haha. If you’ve read any of my other fics, you’ll know I’m really bad at not falling down the research rabbit hole, so I tried to avoid the fake-neuroscience technobabble trap this time. I also generally don’t ship post-CACW Stony, mostly because I have Major Issues with that movie. As such, I struggled a little bit with this one. This was a bit of a fight for me, but I’m pretty satisfied with how it came out, even if it’s kinda angsty and Serious. Let me know what you thought in the comments, though! Hopefully it read okay to y’all.
> 
> This was my first time doing a remix relay, and it was kind of awesome honestly. It was more challenging than I thought, working with content that I had absolutely no control over. It was a great writing workout. It reminded me of playing telephone as a kid with a group of thirty-two kids, where the phrase that you ended on was often completely unrelated to the one that had been originally spoken. I wonder if it would have even stayed Stony without this being a Cap/Iron-Man event! There’s a fascinating thought.
> 
> Last, very silly and self-indulgent comment: I love the opening quote for this fic for so many reasons, but specifically Tony has been in 8 films and this fic is set in the middle of the two-part Infinity War, and just. I'm too pleased with myself. Someone be excited about this with me.
> 
> Anyway, that’s all, folks! Thanks for reading. Until next time!


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